


Je Me Fous du Passé

by RosalindBeatrice



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Angst, Autumn, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, McLennon, Mutually Unrequited, Regret, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-27 00:04:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5025865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosalindBeatrice/pseuds/RosalindBeatrice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in October 1965. John drops by Cavendish and relives a trip he and Paul took four years earlier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

John finds Paul sitting on the floor in the sunny back room of Cavendish, listening to some cabaret bullshit and looking far too thoughtful given the nature of the music, rubbing his little finger back and forth across his lower lip. John's "hullo" draws no response from him; he just remains seated there, lost in his own world. Any other time John might respect his silence—he gets that way as well when he's in the middle of writing something deep—but he's in a rush to show Paul a song that's just occurred to him, get his input while the inspiration is still cresting. 

  
"C'mon," John says, kicking him lightly in the arse with the sharp toe of one boot. "Turn off that rubbish, I've just written—"

 

"Hey," says Paul, turning about and frowning. "Knock it off, alright?"

 

"Don't be foolish," he says, plunking himself down in the chair behind Paul. He can't resist it and nudges Paul in the arse again. 

 

Paul swats at his foot, but his heart isn't in it John can tell, so he leaves off prodding him. The singer's brassy, warbly voice rises and crescendoes, horns and strings swelling with her. He's about to mock it, sounds like she's gargling fucking mouth rinse, when he gets a funny sensation. A shadowy memory builds and as it gradually gets clearer, like something floating up from murky water, he can see Paul's face in a dim cafe while this song plays softly on a scratchy LP, and underneath the table he's stroking John's ankle with a foot. 

  
  
"This is from Paris, isn't it?" he says and Paul nods his head, not turning around.

  
Outside the white French doors, the trees in the garden have the faintest kiss of October's orange and yellow, and looking at them John remembers.

  
  
"Thought we weren't ever going to talk about that," he says. 

  
  
"I didn't bloody ask you to come over," Paul snaps, looking over his shoulder. 

 

John had started it. It was the morning after they'd arrived in Paris. 

 

He'd woken up with Paul's arm across his chest and his body curled close, which in itself wasn't unusual. Both their beds at home, which they'd shared loads of times, were singles, and it was difficult to fit two people to them if someone's arm wasn't around the other. On this occasion, however, he could also feel something unfamiliar pressed into his backside and it'd taken him a moment to realise that Paul was piss-proud. John was too, it was morning after all, and anyway Paul couldn't help their close quarters. John was the one who'd done something mad about it rather than moving away and leaving Paul be.  

  
Reaching back, he'd slipped a hand between their bodies and touched Paul for a joke. He'd meant it to have been a joke, at any rate. But when he opened his mouth and said, "Aren't you going to take care of this?" he hadn't sounded like himself at all. The brashness had gone out of his voice and he'd all but fucking murmured the words, like a bloody girl or something. As quickly as he'd done it, he'd withdrawn his hand, expecting a punch in the kidney, but what happened instead was that a sleepy, slightly grouchy-sounding Paul retorted, "Aren't  _you_ going to take care of it?" Paul was joking, of course, until all at once he wasn't and they were both pawing at each other like half-starved animals and Paul's hand was on him, stroking him off. 

 

After that, they'd spent far too much time in bed than was seemly for two straight men and forgot all about tailing it to Spain. John had told himself at the time that it was just a product of being young and randy eighteen hours out of the day, combined with the difficulty of pulling girls when you didn't speak their language. He knew deep down that was bullshit, though. They'd had it off with dozens of girls in Hamburg and most didn't know two words of English. Sex was a universal language. That wasn't why they hadn't had any French birds.   
  
For almost a fortnight they lived out of that manky little room and, when they weren't hanging around Jürgen, haunted cafes and pubs and streets trying to get away with the maddest things. They discovered a club where blokes could snog and hold hands and no one would bat an eyelid, John remembered, but that wasn't as much fun as doing it on the sly, out in public where anyone could catch them. He didn't remember everything they'd gotten up to, but one memory that stuck out was pulling Paul into a ginnel after nightfall and talking him into going down on him. He thought he would pass out with the pleasure of it. Before it'd all happened, he'd never thought about making it with a guy. He never did figure out, afterwards, why he'd done what he did, grabbing Paul that morning, but with Paul things had always gone a different way than they had with anyone else. 

 

It stopped as suddenly as it started. When John's money ran out, they left the mad version of themselves behind in Paris. It wasn't a conscious decision, but they both knew without having to discuss it that they could have one or the other, the band or their strange inexplicable tryst, and there had never been any question that it would be music. Nothing was more important than that. They weren't going to gamble it all away on a fortnight in a foreign city. John didn't bring it up and Paul didn't ask, and though it was a bit awkward in the weeks following their return, eventually things went back to normal. Yet he caught himself thinking about it at the oddest moments, and for a time the fun went out of shagging Cynthia, Pat, and all the other girls he messed about with. They weren't as bold or as cheeky as Paul, who had distinct wants of his own and, as it had turned out, wasn't at all shy about asking for them to be met. 

 

It was only when Bob Wooler accused him of being a fag that he felt the full weight of what they'd done. Maybe he'd been paying too much attention to Paul that night, he didn't know, or maybe Wooler really was just making an innocent joke when he brought up the holiday with Eppy—ironic really since John hadn't laid so much as a finger on Brian. But with the accusation, he'd realised how precarious things were. Suppose someone in Paris had spied him and Paul, for instance, and was just waiting for the right moment to shop it around to the tabloids? He'd taken that rage, that clawing fear, out on poor Bob and hadn't regretted the incident one bit the night that it happened, even when he caught the panic and shock on Paul's pretty face afterwards. In the morning of course he was aghast, he'd done a far better job putting their success in jeopardy than some French tabloid ever could, but at the time it'd felt pretty good to fist Bob in the stomach and defend his reputation like a man. 

 

He put it out of his head completely then. It belonged to the past and there was no point in thinking about it. It was too confusing to think about, really.  

 

He never suspected that Paul also thought about it, though. Paul is so practical, so businesslike about everything on God's bloody earth, that John had assumed he'd just cleanly put it out of mind. That Paul might have feelings about it is frankly a bit of a shock. John has no idea whatsoever what he should do with this information. 

 

So after several moments of silence, he settles on, "Didn't know you were busy. You'd said yesterday you'd be home."

 

"Yeah, but you usually ring, don't you?"

 

"Sometimes," says John. 

 

Another song begins, corny and poppy and cheery. Weirdly, he recognises this one from Hamburg and again it brings back a rush of feeling with Paul at the centre. There's a memory of Paul and him strolling past the quay at daybreak, having been up all night. The sea breeze is blowing cool and fresh onto their faces and they are young and penniless, but they're so goddamn lucky. There isn't anybody in the world like Paul. 

 

The trouble is that no person or book or film prepares you for these feelings. They prep you for the stupid stuff, like they rapture you’ll feel when you marry the girl you love, when she gives you your first kid, when you get that promotion at the office. But forget about sadness and anything else, you're on your own with those ones. Definitely no one tells you what to feel when you have your 11th number-one hit or the Queen wants to give you a daft fucking medal in front of the whole fecking British Empire. Nothing prepares you for zipping around in a millionaire's yacht on the warm, sun-sparkling ocean a millionaire miles away from cold damp Liddypool. No one gives you a guidebook on what to do with more tits and arse from more impossibly beautiful women than you can handle. No one teaches you how to cope with all the journalists and the suits and the rest of the insufferable cunts who want to take every word you say seriously. But mostly no one prepares you for Paul, not Elvis, not Bob Dylan, not Dylan Thomas, not the Bible, not the Tibetan Book of the Dead. 

 

He wants to say to the back of Paul's bent head, "What am I supposed to do?"

 

But that's one thing you don't do, as a Northern man. You don't show anyone more of your belly than you can help, even if it is Paul. There are some things in life that simply don't have answers and you must learn to live with them, even if they do make you want to throw yourself off a cliff sometimes. 

 

He stands and says, "I'm going to make some tea."

 

By the time he has finished, Paul's record is over and he's sitting in a wicker chair with a marijuana cigarette, his face neutral and undisturbed. He takes the cup of tea John hands him without saying a word, and picking up a guitar John starts to sing him the new melody. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

This isn't a new chapter (sorry!), but since this story takes place in autumn, I thought it might be nice to give it a little bump.

In other news, I'm nearly done with the latest chapter of "Close the Door Lightly When You Go" (http://archiveofourown.org/works/5957346/chapters/13692534) and I also have a new J/P short story to post.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based upon a holiday that John Lennon and Paul McCartney took beginning 30 September 1961 and ending around a fortnight later. John was given £100 by a relative for his 21st birthday and together he and Paul hitchhiked to Paris, intending to go to Spain, but once they arrived in Paris decided they didn't want to spend the money to go any further. Supposedly the rest of the band had no idea they were going and thought that the band had split up. (One also wonders why John would spend his windfall on Paul and not, say, his steady girlfriend Cynthia.) 
> 
> The songs mentioned in the story are Edith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1959) which enjoyed popularity in France and "Milord" (1959) which was a hit in Germany in July 1960.


End file.
